The war on masculinity is a war on men

Summary: The gender wars have grown hotter in the past few years, as the assault begins on masculinity. We use our children as guinea pigs to test leftist theories about gender. This will reshape America profoundly, in ways we cannot predict. I doubt future generations will forgive us if this does not end well. But we can still change course.

Multiculturalism: the appreciation of diverse cultures, including their behaviours, cultural assumptions, values, ways of thinking, and communication styles. It is the foundation of modern liberalism. Every race, every ethnicity, every religion, every gender deserves respect. Society must accept each as they are. All have the right to exist on their own terms.

There is one exception, however.

Men must change!

Lots of articles, mostly by women, telling guys how to change their nature. Men telling women to change would be evil sexism.

Young men receive vigorous indoctrination in college, sometimes including mandatory orientation sessions for freshman. Here is a typical film. This is the education for which parents pay one or two hundred thousand dollars – and for which young men burden themselves with crippling student loans (the equivalent of paying for the executioner’s bullet).

“The three most destructive words that every man receives when he is a boy iswhen he’s told to ‘be a man.'”

The Mental Health Center at the University of Texas – Austin went one step farther, with their “MasculinUT” program to indoctrinate students against masculinity (see their instructional posters). Sunlight is toxic to these programs. When asked why a mental health center was indoctrinating against traditional masculinity, they issued a fog of denials and began rebranding the program (no changes to the content, of course).

On another front, Hollywood produces films and TV about the new roles of men and women (see some examples), with traditional men shown as buffoons or evil.

Trivia note: watch films and TV to see who initiates kisses and sex. By my count, in programs of all ages it is over 80% of the time the woman who moves first. Often the guy is abashed-embarrassed-scared at the women’s advances. Hollywood loves “gender-bending” both as an easy plot twist (before it became a common-as-dirt trope) and for its didactic value (educating the ignorant masses).

As a new front, the MeToo movement quickly went from protesting blatant sexual harassment and workplace misconduct to re-education about the role of genders (details here).

Conclusions

Various reasons are given for this massive re-education campaign, conducted on a scale not seen since those by the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China. The latest is to “reduce violence.” That’s obviously a bogus excuse. African-American communities have sky-high crime rates, yet even far-right extremists do not propose forcibly “reforming” their culture.

This is yet another example of how our crazy Left has taken the controls of America. Like monkeys in the control room of a nuclear power plant, they excitedly push buttons and spin dials. They see no need for experimentation, and use a generation of young Americans as guinea pigs to test their theories about the foundations of both individual psychology and our society. To mention one obvious possible consequence: there is a massive body of evidence that women prefer bad boys. They probably will consider feminized guys unattractive, creating large problems for both men and women in generation Z.

Of course, we are irresponsible fools for allowing Leftists to do this. Should those not work well (how could anything of this scale, without testing?), Generation Z will pay the price for our dereliction of duty.

39 thoughts on “The war on masculinity is a war on men”

Men represent over 90% of global prison populations for serious deadly crimes not women. You only type because you or your partner or children have not been stabbed, shot dead, robbed at gun point or knife point, injured in reckless driving (over 80% of road traffic fatalities are caused by men), injured or killed in a road rage incident, domestic violence, assassinated, your daughter raped, stray bullet from gang warfare.

There is no war on masculinity only people trying to protect themselves from toxic masculinity. Martin Luther King was murdered by a man (assassination). Not until the vices of men affect you. Once you are affected you will become a feminist. It is because of the effects of toxic masculinity that feminist voices are growing.

(1) Since a massively disproportionate number of those crimes are committed by African Americans, you must be advocating a war on African-American culture. Tell us about that! Are you marching and writing petitions?

(2) Back in the real world — crime rates against women have been dropping for a long time.

(3) There is zero evidence that Leftist’s gender-bending will have any effect on crime against women, let alone reduce it. Those effeminate men produced by your indoctrination might be ignored by women, and become frustrated and violent women-haters.

These programs are irresponsible experiments, with reducing violence an excuse for social changes Leftists desire to do anyway. Performed on children and young men without either democratic approval, or consent of them or their parents.

“Protect themselves from toxic masculinity” and “War on masculinity” are the same thing, miss commissar. Why should I support an ideology that denigrates me, calls me toxic and blames all the worlds ills on me as a blanket statement. All you are doing is making men like me dismissive and uninterested in anything to do with you or your misguided, Utopian fantasies. Hence the pushback, hence the alt-right. But, no, it’s not your fault at all its the horrible, phallus wielding, patriarchal men that are the source of all the worlds evils.

Men have been violent since ancient times and has nothing to do with fatherlessness or motherlessness as the main factor.

It is only with the rise of feminism that toxic masculinity began getting exposed in recent years. If and when you get shot or stabbed you won’t care if the offender was fatherless or motherless. What matters is the perpetrator basef on police reports will most likely be a male (nothing bad) trying to prove manhood with violence (that’s called toxic masculinity – that’s what feminists are fighting).

The “war” on men is in mens best interest so their prison populations reduces from the 90%s and so they stop seeming inferior in civil capacity based on their level of violence compared to Womens.

(1) “Men have been violent since ancient times and has nothing to do with fatherlessness or motherlessness”

That’s a bizarrely simplistic perspective. Women too have been violent since we came down from the trees. Magnitudes matter. Crime rates against women have been falling. There is some research linking criminality of both men and women to being raised as by a single mother. Closing your eyes does not make facts go away.

(2) “What matters is the perpetrator basef on police reports will most likely be a male “”

And disproportionate odds of him being Black. I eagerly await to hear about your war on African-American culture. Logic and all that.

(3) “The “war” on men is in mens best interest so their prison populations reduces”

In movies, the character that wants to inflect changes on people – without their consent – based on untested theories – is evil. Look in the mirror.

Or read some history. Ideologues in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and communist China wrecked countless lives implementing their theories. They were confident – just like you. They did not care for consent or democratic votes on their programs. Just like you.

I especially love that kind of long feminist exposés (like all word in “ism”, it is actually toxic) based on brainless, broad assertions like “men do all the violence, therefore men must be changed”…. Like collective reasoning much? Apparently, for this kind of groupthinkers (thinking -if one must call it that- in groups about groups), individuals don’t exist. And the actual distribution of crime (like all observation of actual facts) do not either: the fact that a vast majority of crimes are committed by a ridiculously minute proportion of a population doesn’t seem to phase these people even a little bit. The one in ten M&M’s allegory isn’t far away.

And one has to admire the “toxic masculinity” thingy: what a good lexical tool to criminalize masculinity (noting that it is never even broadly defined, and never correlated to reality or the legitimacy of most masculine behavior), or make it a disease.

These people don’t seem able to admit that crime and violence will always be part of the human experience, that shit does happen, that things do go south on a regular basis (also, that women have their part in it, as perpetrators -in less cases-, motivators, enablers….), and that they will need a lot of “toxic males” to protect them, keep the brunt of the damage at bay, and repair and rebuild afterwards. Whereas the education and social engineering they promote destroys a big and growing proportion of boys very early in life, and seems to guarantee that there will be few, very few guys able AND willing to help them when it matters later.

There is something self destructive or completely utopian in that mentality…. I couldn’t tell which of these two things is the dominant trait.

Last time I checked, you need men to keep the infrastructure of civilization going. You know, the thing that allows you to occupy a climate-controlled home or office space, acquire food and water, and get your garbage picked up.

There is no war on masculinity only people trying to protect themselves from toxic masculinity

Just a reminder: feminism is not a leftist ideology. One can’t be a liberal and be against due process, freedom of speech, right to association, and all the other cornerstones of civilization that feminists seek to tear down.

That is not correct. Left and right refer only to positions on a one-dimensional political spectrum. That was its origin in 1789, referring to how representatives seated themselves in the National Assembly. Left and Right have no fixed political meanings, only relative to each other.

“One can’t be a liberal”

Political labels such as “liberal” and “conservative” have definite meanings, unlike Left and Right. But those meanings drift over time. A British liberal of 1800 would not be a liberal in Britain today. Hubert Humphrey was a liberal icon when he ran for President in 1968. Someone with his views would be a conservative today.

More broadly, meanings of words change over time. They mean what the people of that time and place believe they mean. Saying that everybody is wrong misunderstands the function of language. Here is a WaPo article giving examples. The Oxford Editing Blog has examples of words that “flipped” their meaning over time.

I too note the lack of gratitude Joan has for the air conditioner in her home. It was invented by a man, it was in all likelihood mostly manufactured by a man, it was installed by a man, it has since been serviced by a man. Let’s see how long you last without electrical, plumbing and sewage. All installed and maintained by masculine men you hate. Heck, your internet access? Your internet service wire was installed by a man. Takes a man to get up those telephone poles so this woman can spew her maledictions all over the internet. What an ungrateful …. no I better not finish that one.

It interests me how proposals to redefine masculinity lack any meaningful sense of history. In the minds of our deigned saviors masculinity is a singe hideous construct, indifferent to the whims of social class, resource distribution and time. Apparently friction between different cultures within a society (e.g. the cosmopolitan, cloistered elites of Kyoto versus the hardened, stoic attitudes of the eastern warlords) are nonexistent. Methinks the existential bubble of the upper-middle class is showing.

Meanwhile, the long march of feminism is marked by exemptions and paradoxical desires: personal and economic freedom matched by safeguards to protect them from the pitfalls of life, demands that men embrace liberal sentiments until they must pivot to conservative ones for matrimonial commitment, etc. These demands are too ephemeral and nebulous to really codify into social norms, and too many women will rebel against those fuzzy standards for them to become concrete.

This feminist push to redefine masculinity will fail. I don’t say that out of malice but basic Hayekian recognition. Society as a whole is too dynamic and robust to allow it. Programs of social engineering, enforced from the top down, only fully succeed in ages of chaos or through authoritarian threat. I doubt Gleichschaltung will be coming to America any time soon, so the public will have options. Men are already rebelling against mainstream consensus, either by adapting different virtues or keeping their heads down and withdrawing from participation in public life; grassroots movements will spring up to battle perceived inequality and injustice;

I only have one long-term fear, and that’s if the U.S. follows Japan in its gender trends.

I’ve never been to japan or talked to any japanese people, but from what I can tell from articles like this, is that the men are not even trying to have girlfriends, or sex, of ANY kind save the virtual. “Grass-Eaters” they’re called.

I do live in Japan, and this is definitely a trend. I currently have seen three interrelated trends socially in Japan:

1) The “Grass Eating Men” – These are young men, mostly Millenial generation or younger, who don’t have an interest in dating, in women or in sex. They are devoted to their hobbies, want to work a low-stress job (can’t always get that, though) and don’t have a lot of ambition. Many of them claim to dislike materialist greed and don’t want to buy status symbols or live a consumptive lifestyle. It’s a very small, but growing group on the fringe of society, but it has people worried. This is different from another trend of some young men being very effeminate but still straight. That’s more a style/lifestyle choice similar to the U.S.

2) General decline in dating, marriage and having children. This has been widely discussed. There really isn’t a feminist movement here in any observable sense and it’s still very hard for women to have a career, but it feels more like women are just “voting with their bodies” by having fewer (or zero) children and often skipping marriage altogether because they don’t like the obligations and social constraints that come with it.

3) Hikkikomori – A modern kind of agoraphobia in which people (both young men and young women) won’t leave their rooms and immerse themselves in online games, fantasy worlds (manga and anime) and social media. If forced outside, they suffer from panic attacks and physical illness. They are usually supported by their parents even into their 30’s. Currently, there is a great deal of worry about what will become of them. (ie. What happens when their parents retire or pass away? They don’t have a way to support themselves)

These trends overlap and reinforce each other.

I’ve seen among many people across a wide variety of situations (in the Tokyo area) people marrying later and later, but still the majority of young people tend to try to find someone to marry. It used to be said that a woman at age 25 was at risk of becoming a “Christmas cake” (no one buys a Christmas cake on Dec. 26 or after…) Now it has moved up to 30 – 35. But both men and women reaching their early 30’s tend to start looking harder and marriages after age 30 tend to be after a short but intense dating/engagement – looks a lot like “I’ll take the first decent person I can find since time is running out”. Both men and women seem to do this. Divorce rates are low in Japan, but it’s commonly understood that many married couples dislike or even hate each other after a while, but stay together because divorce is seen as shameful (it’s perceived as failure). But the percentage of never-married people is rising rapidly in the new generations.

Estimations vary (could be more than 700 000 Japanese, mostly male, of prime working age), but the difference between the “herbivore men” and “Hikokomoris” is that the former shun relationships and the rat race that usually goes along, whereas the latter avoid the rat race, or even any type of work or activity, out of fear of failure and/or failure early in life. Considering the frightening level of pressure put on Japanese kids from an early age (and the still prevalent mentality that puts a higher emphasis on success for boys as their “only chance” in life) in their schedules, extra-curricular activities, grades expectations…. This is a particularly serious problem (also in South Korea and Taiwan, were similar conditions apply), that puts a higher bar on children very early on, a higher threshold for what is deemed success plus high costs of “entry”, financially, emotionally…) , and therefore, a stronger incentive not to play at all. In the socio-economic context of Japan (jobs market first of all, but also cost of living, salary levels…), the pressure level has only piled up over the last two decades.

But hikokomoris and herbivore men are two deeply overlapping phenomenons that have many similar causes, and feed of each other. For the latter, there are multiple articles on the topic (with a bunch from the 2010-2014 period, when the phenomenon was pinpointed and went mainstream as a sensational topic), and reflects the ever increasing disinterest in sex and relationships in Japan’s youth (girls not immune…. But men be blamed).

Japan is widely known for possessing the lowest birth rate among industrialized nations: it stood at 1.46 in 2015 and will undoubtedly fall lower in the next few years.The country also has the lowest ratio of children to overall population among countries with 32 million+ people (12.3%). The population is projected to drop 30 million by 2050, which will put massive strain on social security infrastructure as well as make it impossible for economic growth to occur in most sectors.

The main contributor is the collapse of standard interpersonal norms between men and women. Most men in Japan basically don’t have a desire to date, take on the traditional salaryman path, or establish a family. Significant numbers retreat into the home (hikikomori), only take on part-time work (freeters), drop out of work altogether (my sobriquet), or show no interest in sex (herbivore men). Women care more about their careers and see men as side concerns or indirect providers at best; they are repulsed by the notion of ever marrying any of the groups mentioned. Revisionists try to paint this as a encouraging trend (rebelling against patriarchal norms!), which is both prima facie idiotic and shows their complete dearth of historical knowledge.

Barring invasion by an enemy, the decay and collapse of almost every empire was preceded by a significant portion of the population losing investment in its future. This was expressed in many ways – Roman soldiers shifted alliances from general to general depending on their promises of land distribution, giving the middle finger to stability – and widespread apathy/indifference is the modern-day manifestation. As you know, we already have this issue among working-class men and it will only be exacerbated in the future.

1. Rollo and others have spotted how articles that begin as seeking to cure only the “toxic” parts of masculinity almost always segue to just seeking to cure “masculinity”, period, making the word “toxic” a descriptor, not a modifier, of the word “masculinity.” Most of the pieces you cite above do that, some of them written by purported men. (There’s one particular screed – I forget the author – from the Atlantic. turns out “he” was a trans man.

2. Open question for the academics: over apart from inventions and installations: when disaster strikes, who do you expect to rescue you? To whom do all you culture warriors turn first when the water is up to your knees? Mr. Macho ex-military cop/fireman/Guardsman? Or the skinny purple haired barista of no fixed persuasion putting photos on Snapchat?

3. The films and programs telling you to abjure “being a man” and instead be a SNAG crybaby are having an effect on college men, just not what the kind hearts and coronets expected. It’s why pr0n is up and hook ups are down, not because of moral purity or fear of fornication, as are any form of cis-het relationships. Those are to be stamped out, according to more than a few campus conduct manuals.

4. The campus anti-sex league double-plus-goodthink is creating significant unhappiness, not just for the horny men being told they are irredeemable beasts who should live as castrati. But also women who might like boyfriends won’t get any, but the men dare not approach per campus rules or it’s an “unwanted communication” and an expulsion offense. The poor schlubs just want to get their degrees and get out alive. Making the Pareto principle ratio on campus more like 90/10 instead of 80/20 in the general population.

4. The whole “stamp out masculinity” thing is a fools errand, no different from Lysenko-ism in Russia (denying the existence of genetics because lemon trees should grown in the Arctic) to climate science denial to wacky psychology trends like recovered memories, child abuse in day care, and drugging active boys to make them docile. They will do damage alright. But all are doomed to failure. As everyone’s favorite popcorn movie chaos theorist states, “life will find a way.” So will masculinity, however “toxic” it is labeled in the meantime.

5. The grass eater thing is still very real in Japan, but it hasn’t really taken root elsewhere in so virulent a form. Today’s MGTOW are not so numerous or persuasive, though some men will drop out after a fashion to just get by.

6. OTOH, those who reject the churchian or cuckservative exhortation to “be a man” and marry a carousel rider to raise her Alpha-generated sprogs (then “be a joik and go to woik”) have the right idea. As marriages and family formation begin to falter further, you will see how severe the reaction

“grass eating men”, “decline in dating, marriage and child birth”, population decline, victims of “involuntary celibacy” all point in the same general direction. this may just be our species’ darwinian moment. the end comes for all species eventually. why should homo sap be any different?

“Many [female rats] were unable to carry pregnancy to full term or to survive delivery of their litters if they did. An even greater number, after successfully giving birth, fell short in their maternal functions. Among the males the behavior disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic overactivity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. The social organization of the animals showed equal disruption.”

Which is why I think those — especially conservative economists — are nuts when proposing that Japan needs rapid population growth. Japan was considered crowded when Matthew Perry visited Japan in 1853. It has a population of 127 million. Bringing it back to 51 million, the level in 1910, would allow them to make it a garden.

A shrinking population might be the best strategy in the industrial revolution now starting, as automation begins massive job destruction.

“A shrinking population might be the best strategy in the industrial revolution now starting, as automation begins massive job destruction.”

I understand the rationale for that line of thinking, but what bugs me in this is the feasibility of such a change: a shrinking population means a rapidly ageing population, with a burden of old people to care for of such a magnitude that any social system would collapse outright; it is already more than stressed in Japan, causing the workforce to be overworked and getting a lower standard of living and less actual income than 30 years ago. Added to the costs of living (real estate first and foremost), the result isn’t pretty and only feeds that spiral of social pressure on parts of the youth that avoids -or is tempted to avoid- the rat race or any career at all. Not changing that dynamics will cause, somewhere in the future, a breaking point of some sorts.

So, though I see and appreciate the logic and interest of a “depopulation strategy”, I fail to see how it won’t include a dramatic, potentially destructive phase, where a very significant portion of the elderly will suffer, where any sense of national solidarity will go out the window (and with it, potentially, the social contract), and where, overall, social political instability may ensue. In societies where generations are linked not only by the ties of family obligations, but also by vast and complex social systems, and a society where dwellings are small (no family farm where the generations live together) and savings limited (though the Japanese are the first savers on the planet) when compared to such potential needs, I really don’t see how that equation is squared without a terrifying level of economic and social pain, with potentially destructive consequences.

‘The War Against Boys’ is a very interesting and thought provoking read. Very interesting indeed, thanks for the reference. Well reasoned, coherent, objective, and very persuasive in its conclusions.

We are in a sort of ideologically driven cultural madness, in denial of all evidence. When it blows up, as such things always do in the end, its going to take an awful lot with it.

Its a curious thing about revolutions. One is that they always end up turning on the moderates who made the initial revolution possible – they become defined as the most important enemies. There is a terror,

(The great and exceptional achievement of the English Revolution was not to have a terror.)

The second is that there is always a counter revolution, as unpredictable in its effects as the revolution it responds to.

“It is the few men who don’t behave properly who are ruining it for the majority who demonstrate masculinity at its best. ”

I doubt very much that there are more men “ruining it for the majority” than in the past. What data we have suggests the opposite (real rape levels have been falling for decades). Rather the standards for men are being made unrealistic, while they are being lowered for women.

“We don’t need to change masculinity.”

Radical feminists, increasingly powerful in our society, disagree with you. They are changing the education of young men to change masculinity. They don’t care about your opinion.

“We need to defend it.”

Men who think that men are the core of the problem are part of the problem.